Students That Freelance

The Story

In late March, part of my personal website was stolen and reappeared elsewhere on the internet. Obviously I didn’t give anyone permission to use any part of my personal website for any reason, so this was something very fishy.

I first discovered that my website (at least the home page) had been downloaded to someone’s PC desktop in Florida. Since I am located in Tennessee, this in and of itself was not right. I discovered the downloading through the use of site stats through StatCounter, an invisible web stat tracker. Once I noticed referring traffic from a location on someone’s desktop, I immediately asked fellow freelancers what was going on, and was confirmed that someone had indeed downloaded my site.

Since there was really no way for me to contact the person who decided to download my site, at that time all I could do was sit and wait and monitor the traffic. Then one day when I got back from school, I started seeing referral traffic from a domain of which I didn’t own. I followed the link, and there it was; part of my site looked like it was being used in the final part of another site.

At this point I wasn’t sure what I could do about it. But then I remembered that I had protected my site and other various works of mine using a nifty online copyright protection app called Myows. Thus, I proceeded into Myows (after being told to by the owner of the site) to open a case against this infringer. Once I opened the case and typed in the needed information, the next step was to send a cease and desist letter via email to the copyright infringer to remove the site immediately. Within the hour the page had been removed, and within two hours I had an apology email from the infringer.

The Background

Since then, the case in Myows had been resolved and so I closed the case. Never in a million years did I ever think I would have to use Myows to protect my work. I am not a well known designer (yet) and I don’t have a lot of work hanging around the internet, so the fact that someone did steal part of my home page of my site was quite a shock for this little student freelance designer out of the sticks of Tennessee.

This got me thinking, well if this person from Florida could steal my site and use it for their own use, then that means that anyone could take anyone else’s work and use it for their own, whether the original creator is well known or not.

Student freelancers, I believe, are probably more at risk in someone stealing their original works and it being used without their knowledge, because I don’t believe most student freelancers know much about protecting themselves when it comes to copyright infringement.

In the United States, the second you start creating an original work, no matter if it is a design, painting, sculpture, website, movie, prose, article, music, lyric, etc, it is protected under copyright law. The exception, as far as I know, is if you are working for someone for whom you are their employee and you are hired to create such works on an employee basis (meaning they take taxes out of your paycheck, pay you a W-2, provide you benefits if you are full time, etc), then your employer owns all the rights of what you create.

Freelancers, since we are working for ourselves, own the rights to everything we create from the moment we create it till the moment we pass it on to someone else in writing. Some freelancers will give all the rights to their clients; some provide limited rights, etc. Such arrangements need to be agreed upon in writing before the work is created and often includes additional compensation in exchange for the rights.

The Tracker

So how did I bust this person in Florida anyways? I mentioned StatCounter earlier, so I should probably explain a little more. StatCounter is an invisible site tracker that tracks visitors to your site. They offer a free service, which is the service I use. I have both my personal site and this site as projects in my account, so it tracks both sites. After installing the code, it will give you real time stats on your visitors, such stats as when they arrived, from what country, what browser they were using, where they came from, screen resolution, etc.

Since StatCounter keeps track of how visitors got to your site and where they go, this is how I was able to track the person that stole my site. By comparing IP address (yes it records those too), I was able to determine that the same person who infringed on my copyrights was the same one who downloaded the site about a week before.

StatCounter is great if you want to track stats on your site. The sole reason I signed up for StatCounter was to have some type of method in which I could attempt to find sites who have possibly infringed on my copyrights. The owner of Myows actually had his personal site stolen, and discovered it through StatCounter as well.

The Protector and Enforcer

The United States Copyright Office is a governmental agency who handles and manages copyrights and intellectual property for individuals and organizations in the United States (I stand corrected, as it is not the USPTO). If you feel as though you should need the full extent of the United States law and a record that you have created that original work, then you can register the copyright documentation through the USCO office and pay a fee to have it protected and documented. However, this is NOT required of anyone to be protected by copyright law.

If there is any situation arise where there is a question of who created the work first (for instance if a copyright infringement case went all the way to court, or you needed to prove you are the original creator), you need to have solid proof that you created the work before the other party gained this work somehow. This is where Myows is great.

Myows acts as a witness in the event that you need to defend your copyright. When you upload your work to Myows, it will date and timestamp the work (using the international date and time) and gives it a personalized number. Doing this provides a permanent record of when you created the work. It is recommended that you upload your work as you are working on it if you plan to show others.

After you have uploaded your original work to Myows, there is an option to open a case (as I described above). This is great as well because Myows was developed with the help of intellectual property lawyers to help set the system up. So their process in handing copyright infringement is recommended by lawyers. As I stated above, Myows created a cease and desist letter that I then sent to the copyright infringer. And well, you know the rest of the story.

You could say that I was fortunate not to have to proceed further with the case, but if I had to, Myows would have helped me with that as well. They will take you through the process of doing every necessary to make sure your work is removed, even to the point of sending a DMCA takedown notice to the infringers web site host provider (if your work appeared on a website).

The best part? Myows has a free service! You get 512 mb of storage for your original works. If you ever need to upgrade, it is affordable to do so. Myows is a one of a kind app, and it is a great free service for all freelancers, including student freelancers.

The Moral of the Story

Let my recent experience with a copyright infringer be a reminder to you. Even if you aren’t doing freelance full time, or just experimenting with freelancing, take the time to protect your work. Copyright infringement can happen to anyone, no matter if they are a big name or just a student. I hope the tools I provided above will help protect you against thieves on the internet.

Myows image used with permission from Max Guedy of Myows